Monday, May 26, 2014

Monday's Child

1.  Some utterly tone-deaf political ads

2. The difference between the Bolivarian Revolution, and a revolting Bolivian.  Evo decides he wants to be a Sport Boy.  And who are YOU to say no?

3.  Charlie Rangel gots GAME, bud.

4.  An experiment and some work I have had a TINY role in supporting (through a kind of crowdsourcing).  Very interesting:  fungus makes ants bit a twig and lock down.  They hang on until they die, and their entire insides are eaten by the fungus.  The interesting thing is the biting down:  it keeps the ant "safe" as a host for the fungus.  The ant doesn't want to bite down, and certainly doesn't want to lock down until it dies.  But the fungus takes over.

5.  Angus has been spending a lot of time in Santa Fe. And this happened in Santa Fe.  Coincidence?  I don't think so...

moremoremore...




6.  The EYM lives in NY.  This happened in NY.  Coincidence?  I actually think it was.

7.  The micro-sociology of charisma:  Jesus edition.

8.  Size matters.  I can imagine the idiots arguing with each other:  "I told YOU to measure!'  "No, I specifically remember you saying that you had checked..."

9.  Psychiatrist-Client privilege?  Hint:  the "privilege" all belongs to the psychiatrist.

10.  Wow.  It's not THAT surprising that a Texas town would spend $60 million on a football stadium.  The level of corruption in local government is remarkable, and clearly some developer got paid off.  But it's a little surprising that they did the "full China" and built the thing in a way that it can never be used, even once.  THAT is real corruption.  Maybe the folks who built the football stadium also built this boat?

11.  Some details on the ACA enrollment roll-out...

12.  All museums have gift shops, with overpriced tchotchkes.  But...is this okay?  The first thing I thought of was the Holocaust Museum has a gift shop, though their web site is down.  But Anne Coulter thought that, too.  So never mind.

13.  Family finds forgotten fall-out shelter.  Reminds me of that rather frightening scene from "The Road."

14.  New heights of budgie smuggling? Or depths.  This guy had juevos....diez y seis juevos.

15.  Only one man has won an Ig Nobel and gone on to win a "real" Nobel...in this case, in physics.  Here he is!

16.  This was the right thing to do, because it would have used far more resources to recycle than to throw them away.  Still, the atmospherics are....ironic.

17.  If you meet Wendy McElroy on the road...be afraid.   Because if you support school vouchers, then you like slavery.  Or something like that.  I couldn't really follow it.

18.  Pretty cool commencement speech.  Though I assume that the Haverford students would object, right, Dirty Davey?  Let me note that I don't question their right protest.  What I object to is their smug, privileged sense that they should. No student at Haverford has ever met a smart person who disagreed with them.  I don't know what that is, but it's not education.

19.  Whoa, whoa, whoa:  May is "Masturbation Month?"  And I'm just now finding out?  Time's a wastin'!  Apparently started by this company.  Hey, Hallmark promotes holidays so people buy cards, right?

20.  Angus will likely have written about this by the time MC publishes, so I'll just include the update:  Frampton Comes Unemployed.

21.  Knowledge Problem:  What is the price when you don't believe in prices?  Have you noticed that ACA prices rhymes with crisis?  Sort of?

Headlines:

Are You Smoking Pot?  Why, YES, Yes I Am, Officer...

It Used to Say "Booger"

Naked Man Playing Violin at Courthouse Jailed


1 comment:

Dr. Tufte said...

FWIW: We used # 4 (parasitic fungal infection changing behavior in a higher animal) as part of our economic argument about whether a zombie apocalypse will end ... in an apocalypse at all. Forthcoming this month in Blood, Brains, and Benajamins: The Economics of the Undead.